and imperfectly sketched, was the character of Reginald
Glanville--the one, who of all my early companions differed the most
from myself; yet the one whom I loved the most, and the one whose future
destiny was the most intertwined with my own.

I was in the head class when I left Eton. As I was reckoned an
uncommonly well-educated boy, it may not be ungratifying to the admirers
of the present system of education to pause here for a moment, and recal
what I then knew. I could make twenty Latin verses in half an hour;
I could construe, without an English translation, all the easy Latin
authors, and many of the difficult ones, with it: I could read Greek
fluently, and even translate it though the medium of a Latin version at
the bottom of the page. I was thought exceedingly clever, for I had only
been eight years acquiring all this fund of information, which, as one
can never recal it in the world, you have every right to suppose that
I had entirely forgotten before I was five and twenty. As I was
never taught a syllable of English during this period; as when I once
attempted to read Pope's poems, out of school hours, I was laughed at,
and called "a sap;" as my mother, when I went to school, renounced
her own instructions; and as, whatever school-masters may think to the
contrary, one learns nothing now-a-days by inspiration: so of everything
which relates to English literature, English laws, and English history
(with the exception of the said story of Queen Elizabeth and Lord
Essex,) you have the same right to suppose that I was, at the age of
eighteen, when I left Eton, in the profoundest ignorance.

At this age, I was transplanted to Cambridge, where I bloomed for two
years in the blue and silver of a fellow commoner of Trinity. At the end
of that time (being of royal descent) I became entitled to an honorary
degree. I suppose the term is in contradistinction to an honourable
degree, which is obtained by pale men in spectacles and cotton
stockings, after thirty-six months of intense application.

I do not exactly remember how I spent my time at Cambridge. I had a
piano-forte in my room, and a private billiard-room at a village two
miles off; and between these resources, I managed to improve my mind
more than could reasonably have been expected. To say truth, the whole
place reeked with vulgarity. The men drank beer by the gallon, and
eat cheese by the hundred weight--wore jockey-cut coats, and talked
slang--rode for w